Wednesday, January 20, 2016

A Precursor to the Chainmail Fantasy Supplement

Chainmail (1971) is
correctly regarded as the first commercially-available fantasy wargame system. The
Fantasy Supplement that Gary Gygax and Jeff Perren tacked on to the end of Chainmail inspired Dave Arneson as he
created the Blackmoor setting, and formed the basis for the original set of
monsters and spells underlying Dungeons
& Dragons. Something has been forgotten, however, in the forty-five
years since Chainmail was published. Chainmail itself drew on a two-page set
of rules developed for a late 1970 game run by the New England Wargamers
Association (NEWA), which were designed by one Leonard Patt. Patt’s system shows us the
first fantasy game with heroes, dragons, orcs, ents, and wizards who cast
fireballs at enemies, though his contribution today goes entirely unacknowledged. The picture above shows this system in play at a
Miniature Figure Collectors of America convention in October 1970 representing
the Battle of the Pelennor Fields, a demonstration that won a “Best in Show”
award.

I was aware of the existence of Patt’s game when I wrote Playing at the World; in fact, I speculated in a footnote
that, “It is certainly possible that
news of the positive reception of NEWA’s Tolkien game influenced Gygax’s
decision to include fantasy rules in Chainmail”
(pg44). Fantasy rules were, at the time, virtually unheard of. But until now, I had erroneously supposed that NEWA “opted not to publish
their system,” when in fact it simply appeared in a place I hadn’t yet been able to unearth.

Patt's rules appeared in the NEWA magazine The Courier, which would briefly merge with TSR's Little Wars later in the 1970s. Because early issues of the Courier are
quite scarce, this relationship has escaped the attention of posterity until
now: even the New England Wargamers Association’s web timeline, which presents a somewhat overgenerous account of NEWA's role in the history of gaming, does
not at the time of this writing mention Patt or the publication of his rules - though
it does note the MFCA award for the Philadelphia convention game, which were
widely written up in places like the MFCA’s Guidon:

The Rules

Like the Fantasy Supplement of Chainmail, Patt structured his fantasy rules as a modular adjunct
that he “set up to fit within most Ancient or Medieval rules and were simply an
addendum.” Broadly, the system in first edition Chainmail reflects an expansion and an edit of the Patt rules. Patt
covers Wizards, Heroes, Antiheroes, dragons, ents, and orcs; he also alludes to
dwarves, elves, hobbits, and trolls. Chainmail significantly
expands this list, as Chainmail considers
a scope of fantasy simulation beyond that of Tolkien.

Nonetheless, in the overlapping components of the system, we
find many elements in Chainmail that
unmistakably derive from Patt. Patt’s naming of his fighter units as “Heroes” and “Antiheroes” alone should immediately alert us to a potential
influence on Chainmail. While Patt
does not include the “Super-Hero” of Chainmail,
intriguingly he does say of Heroes that “they had fighting power that
approached that of supermen,” which may have influenced the later naming of the
rank above them. Patt explains of Heroes and Antiheroes that “they are the last
man to be killed in any melee;” Chainmail
similarly says of them that “they are the last figure in a
unit that will be killed by regular missile fire or melee.” Most strikingly,
however, Patt’s rules contain a system that is a clear precursor to the hit
point mechanic of Chainmail. Patt’s
Heroes are equivalent to 5 men, and “hits against them are not cumulative” so “it
takes a melee kill by the enemy of 10 points [i.e. 5 men] in one melee throw”
to kill them. Famously, in Chainmail a
Hero fights as four men, so they are slightly less powerful than their
ancestors in Patt. The precedent that hits against Heroes must be “not cumulative”
and occur in the same round is followed by Chainmail;
in Chainmail “four simultaneous kills
must be scored against Heroes (or Anti-Heroes) to eliminate them. Otherwise,
there is no effect upon them.” Elsewhere in Chainmail,
we see the term “cumulative” hits used as an antonym for “simultaneous” hits.

Chaimail’s Wizards, the precursor to the
Magic-user class of Dungeons &
Dragons, draw significantly on Patt’s rules as well. Where in Chainmail Wizards “are themselves
impervious to normal missile weapons,” in Patt, “Wizards cannot be killed by
missile fire.” But by far Chainmail's most historically-significant borrowing from Patt is how Wizards “can cast a fire ball.”
Fireball, which is indeed given as “fire ball” in first edition Chainmail, is one of the signature
mechanisms of fantasy gaming, and to find it articulated prior to Chainmail is a stunning revelation. As
in Chainmail, the “fire ball” of Patt
is a burst effect which a Wizard casts at up to a distance of 24” in game; the
burst area of effect is however an inch larger in Chainmail than in Patt. And as they later would in Chainmail, Heroes and Anti-heroes get a
saving throw against a fireball in Patt: they “are saved by a throw of 5 or 6.”
While saving throws were not an uncommon element in games of the time, the
notion that making a saving throw against spells originated prior to Chainmail is also a significant revision
to our historical understanding. Chainmail
would dramatically expand the capabilities of Wizards, in its first edition
adding a “lightning bolt” as a damage spell and eight utility spells, but “fire
ball” is not altered in any significant particular from how it appears in Patt.

We can find also various relationships between the language
on monsters in Patt and Chainmail. We see combat against monsters resolved by rolling two six-sided dice: after prospective dragon-slayers fire
missile weapons at their target they “cast two dice,” on which “a roll of 11 or
12 will kill the dragon”; whereas in
Chainmail, arrow fire at a dragon “kills it on a two dice roll of 10 or better.”
But one of the starkest points of appropriation from Patt in the Chainmail rules is in how fireballs
interact with dragons. In both systems, dragons do not roll a saving throw
against the spell. In Patt, “a dragon hit by a fire ball is driven away and
will not attack the wizard’s side for one turn.” In Chainmail, the table for fireball effects reads for the dragon: “drives
dragon back 1 move.” It is by looking at these details, where beyond the mere presence in Patt of dragons and Wizards who cast fireballs, we have this “driving”
language and the single turn penalty, that we see commonalities far too specific to
be a coincidence: it must be a direct borrowing.

With this introduction on the linkage of Chainmail to Patt, take a look for yourself at his original two page rules from the Courier:

Readers may detect other, subtler points of connection between
Patt and Chainmail. For example, the
orcs depicted in Patt are divided into two groups, the Orcs of the Red Eye and
the Orcs of the White Hand. Chainmail has
five groups listed, of which those two appear as the first and fourth group; Chainmail calls the former the “Orcs of
the (Red) Eye,” where that parenthetical tentativeness perhaps reflects lukewarm adoption of Patt’s nomenclature. Patt explains that “Orcs
were basically very obnoxious and disagreeable even to each other” and thus
when they “approach within four inches of one another, 1 die is thrown to see
how they react.” On a roll of 1, the orcs will fall on each other. In Chainmail, “if Orcs of different kinds
approach within a charge move of each other, and they are not meleed by the
enemy, they will attack each other unless a score of 4 or better is rolled on
an ‘obedience die.’” The common “approach within” terminology there shows
vestiges of Patt’s original language. I will leave finding further chestnuts
along these lines as an exercise to the reader: but detectives should remember
that Chainmail differed substantially
in its first, second and third editions, and thus many mechanisms in the
grey-covered third edition, most notoriously “spell complexity,” did not
manifest in the earliest form of the system, where the borrowing from Patt is
clearest.

Recognizing Leonard Patt

It thus appears that we have owed an unacknowledged debt to
an obscure author for decades – so who was he? Leonard Patt was a miniature wargamer
affiliated with the New England Wargamers Association who wrote largely about
ancient rules: in 1970, he also penned an article for the Courier on the “Arms & Equipment of the Roman Soldier.”
However, Patt seems to have had only a fleeting interest in wargames, as his
name drops out of fanzines of the time within a year. Patt, should he still be
with us, would surely be unaware of how Chainmail
followed his work, let alone the profound influence that concepts like “fire
ball” and saving versus spells have had on numberless games over the decades
that followed.

If these rules were so obscure it took me this long to find them, how do we know for sure that the authors of Chainmail saw them, and saw them during the time Chainmail was in development? Because they subscribed to that newsletter and even contributed to it. Handily, the very issue of the Courier carrying these fantasy rules also contains an article by S. Manganiello on “French Uniforms of the Seven Years War” which, in the following issue of the Courier, Jeff Perren attacks in a letter. This proves that at least one of the two authors of Chainmail received and studied the very issue of the Courier containing these fantasy rules at the time, and surely could have shared it with his co-designer. Although these rules came out not long before Chainmail, we know from Gygax’s own account that the Fantasy Supplement was a last-minute addition to Chainmail: he later called it an “afterthought.”

In the early, pre-commercial days of miniature wargaming, the environment was very loose and collaborative, and these kinds of borrowings were not uncommon - but attribution was still an assumed courtesy. Gary Gygax has something of a reputation for adapting
and expanding on the work of the gaming community without always attributing his
original sources. The case of the Thief class is probably the most famous: the
first draft of Gary’s rules do note their debt to the Aero Hobbies crowd, but
as the published version of the rules in Greyhawk
(1975) did not, the obligation of the Thief rules to Gary Switzer and the
others at Aero Hobbies long went unacknowledged. Regarding Chainmail, Gary in late interviews says nothing to suggest that concepts like fireball were not of his own invention;
Patt’s rules compel us to reevaluate those claims. Nonetheless, we must
acknowledge that Gary had a singular gift for streamlining, augmenting and popularizing
rules originally devised by others: certainly we wouldn’t say that Patt’s
original rules could have inspired Blackmoor, and thus Dungeons & Dragons, without Gary’s magic touch and the elaboration
we find in the Chainmail Fantasy
Supplement.

But if you ever vanquished an enemy with a fireball in Dungeons & Dragons, or Magic: the Gathering, or Dragon Age, and especially if you ever made
a saving throw against a fireball, thank Leonard Patt!

Do you mean "RULES FOR AN ANCIENT WARGAME" Originally by Gerard De Gre Modified by Charles and David Sweet"? It was published in the Courier V2 #6 (1970). I found a transcription of it online. It uses board with 4" gridded squares which doesn't match up well with Patt's movement rates in inches (though I imagine wargamers could make the conversions easily enough).

As for very early fantasy rules, there are of course also the WRG 4th edition ancient rules (1973, http://www.wrg.me.uk/WRG.net/History/wrg.html). In the intro of 4th edition it is said that these fantasy rules were used at a 1972 Society of Ancients convention.

This is 2 years after 1970, but given the lack of speedy communication as we know today (and hence 2 years might seem shorter than it is today), could this be a case of parallel interest in fantasy? Interestingly, the spells for the magician in WRG 4th do not mention anything like a fire ball at all.

I've followed your blog since you started it, but only recently purchased PatW. About a third of the way in at the mo'...it's a fantastic work of true scholarship, and is very well-written, to boot. Thanks for all your work and the meticulous follow-up.

Nice find. Thanks for sharing :)Nitpicky question: Is it right to call Chainmail "the commercially-available fantasy wargame system" though, when the fantasy part of it was just a small tacked on supplement?

In the 3rd edition CM, the Fantasy Sup is pages 28-39 plus 43-44, out of 44 pages - over 30% of the material. Not sure I'd call that "small tacked on". Of course, I don't have the numbers for the 1st edition CM, which I imagine is shorter.

Thanks David for locating him! I know a number of people have speculated about which social media profiles and so on might be him. I might suggest though that we not unleash the full fury of the Internet on this fellow, despite his sudden historical prominence: now that David has found him, I'm sure he'll have some thoughts to share, but let's give him some time to come up to speed on all this.

Notice that article even says "...it was a game based on J.R.R. Tolkien's trilogy of fantasy "Lord of the Rings"."

DID PATT PROPERLY ATTRIBUTE *HIS* RULES TO THE TOLKIEN PROPERTIES?/sarcasm

First, the entire world of 'gaming' back then was syncretic and collaborative. Chainmail was never (by anyone knowledgeable) considered to have sprung wholly formed from the forehead of Gygax.

Further, attribution wasn't anywhere near the priority then that it would be once these actually took shape as commercial products and an industry began to grow. Nobody familiar with the personalities of the early role-playing game world would be at all surprised that Gygax in particular would fail to credit someone else; just ask Dave Arneson.

One point: the comment about the orcs of the (red) eye and orcs of the hand isn't a nod (nor theft from) Patt. It's obviously a concept from TOLKIEN (their mutual metasource).

Many thanks, and it's good to see Leonard Patt get his due recognition. I long ago sold off my late-edition copy of the Chainmail rules (at a handsome sum) on eBay. My memory is flawed at my age, but I do recall a foreword by the Chainmail authors mentioning the tabletop miniatures battles of the early 70s. Hardly a decent attribution to the origin of the rules.

One correspondence I noticed is that the introduction suggests using converted Airfix figures for Orcs, Dwarves, Hobbits and Trolls, which apparently Gary did, mentioning using the Airfix Robin Hood figures for Hobbits (Wargamer's Newsletter #127, October 1972).

The Robin Hood sets seem to go in and out of production, I managed to get ahold of some a while back and blogged about them here, (excuse the plug) and some are currently available via Squarehex.

Terrific post!!! Thank you! I love Chainmail and I have always wondered about any other long buried Fantasy wargames rules. I have dreams of one day stumbling upon a photo of Donald Featherstone, Gary Gygax and Phil Barker all sharing a table playing a fantasy wargame complete with figures they all converted themselves! Thanks again for this post!

Just coming back to this article with an interesting footnote (I think). I am scanning the Courier's timeline that you linked, and looking at all the linked documents.

I noticed in the subscriber list of the War Game Digest from 1957 that there is a George S. Patton listed, with a USNA address. Sure enough, according to Wikipedia, George S. Patton IV was assigned to the USNA as part of an exchange program after returning from serving in Korea.